Anthropological linguists study the languages of humans and the rules that
make these languages work. Like culture, languages are learned and shared. When
two people who speak different languages meet, they may not be able to
communicate. The sounds one person produces may have no meaning in the other
person’s language, or, sometimes embarrassingly, the sounds have very
different meanings. Consider the word see in English and the word sí
in Spanish. When an English-speaker makes the sounds for this word, they intend
the sounds to convey the meaning that they can visualize or view something. The
Spanish-speaker, however, makes these same sounds to indicate an affirmative
answer, such as yes. Anthropological linguists also study how meaning is
conveyed by people and the histories of languages.

From Staeck, J.P., 2001, Back to the Earth: An Introduction
to Archaeology. Mountain View: Mayfield.